Traditional inventory management was conducted in a way to minimize total holding purchasing costs and stocking costs by any owner into the selling business. This method was also known as “Economic Order Quantity” (EOQ).

However, with the advent of cloud-based solution and advancement of technology, today more and more business owners are seen switching over to modern inventory management system that allows them:

1. Easy customizationEvery business owner starts his selling business with a motto of increasing brand sales and brand visibility. And, after spending hundreds and thousands of dollars behind your promotions, you won’t like to deny your customers for their orders due to no stock in hand.

- Is your inventory management system open to growth?Firstly, ensure your inventory management system provider allows you to stay responsive to customer’s demands.

Instead of switching over to new system solution just because your current one does not allow you to manage growth, adopting customized inventory management solution that can grow and quickly respond to your new demands, is imperative.

2. Multi-channel inventory synchronization​Multi-channel selling being one of the buzzword for sellers, you want to make sure you adopt this method for improved visibility and faster growth. However, blindly dealing with stock for multiple channels can create confusion and result to over selling of products.

- Do you have a single access for your stock across your stores?Being able to easily sync stock for all your selling channels at one place, will make it easy to track inventory counts on-the-go. This way, you can ensure every store is sufficiently stocked up to grab every opportunity that comes in.

3. Quick entry of sales informationSellers, who have an ability to sync orders coming from multiple sources at one place, are saving time and costs that matters a lot for any startups and small business owners. Having an ability to automate sync of sales order information within a single system, can allow a competitive advantage to process and fulfil customer’s orders in time.

- Does your inventory management system sync order details for every sale that comes in?Modern inventory management systems are helping multi-channel sellers an easy sync of customer’s order details in one system, coming from different sources that can include phone calls, website order, and marketplace orders too.

4. Real-time updatesThe key for a successful inventory management practice depends on how accurately is your stock updated? Ensuring instant stock level updates are helping more and more business owners enhance their customer’s shopping experience, by offering quicker fulfilment service.

- Is your stock level updated in real-time?Your inventory management system should ensure consumed stock is immediately replaced with new ones across every channel that you sell on. Automating inventory updates after every sale, is helping sellers gain a competitive advantage over other sellers who do it manually.

5. Marketplace product listing integrationMore and more sellers are taking an advantage of selling over more than one platform. However, those whose inventory management system allows immediate product listing updates are gain a competitive advantage when selling over marketplaces.

- Are your marketplace listings auto-updated?Automated inventory management software is helping marketplace sellers an ability to easily sync their product listings to their end-stores, from one place. This does not only help them save time, but also, ensures products are always available as per customer’s ever-changing demands.

6. Warehouse integrationSellers who have their warehouses connected to their inventory management system are gaining real-time insights, which help them to understand stock requirement even better.

- Is your warehouse integrated with your inventory management system?Having an ability to manage stock for both- your physical store as well as online store from one place, is encouraging more and more shoppers to expand their business across multiple platforms with no pain.

7. Bar-code capabilityNot a new technology, still many sellers overlook the importance of a bar-code scanning method for their inventory. Able to track inventory movements in real-time, can increase efficiency and reduce risk of robbery.

- Do you assign bar-code to products?Latest inventory management system is allowing sellers allocate unique identification numbers with information to each of their products. This automatically makes it easy and quick to scan movements of your products in store, as well as, at the warehouse.​

8. Manage stock payment entriesAnother biggest challenge to sellers is the hassle of maintaining purchase orders. Unable to record and track stock payment transactions can spoil relation with suppliers and lead to delay in procuring items, which directly impacts the customer’s shopping experience.

- Is your inventory management system able to manage purchase order transactions?Eliminating the hassle of maintaining separate accounting sheets for each suppliers, modern inventory management system offers insights about all purchase payment transactions (cleared and pending) in real-time. This will automatically reduce errors and helps you build stronger relationship with your suppliers.

9. Track important stock metricsListing multiple product categories across their stores and marketplaces are helping sellers increase visibility for their brand. However, able to track performance of each product across all channels are allowing sellers make best optimization of their products.

- Can you measure stock metrics?Generating insightful inventory reports, modern inventory management system ensures sellers are able to instantly track their slow and fast moving stock and make more and more winning decisions.

10. Single access for all your suppliers, and employeesWith the growth of your selling business, automatically increases the need of expanding staff and suppliers to ensure smooth flow of stock throughout. However, many sellers are still finding it difficult to cope up, as they are managing each of them individually.

- Do you have a centralized view?Working with multiple people to manage stock requirements for your selling business, can be easy adopting a modern inventory management system. Such system helps you easily sync all your suppliers and employee’s information at one place, allowing you to stay organized and work with them, efficiently.

Wrapping upIf you are business that wants to scale, adopting modern inventory management solution should be one of your central focuses in this New Year 2016.Good Luck!!